Cynthia Crossen’s “Dear Book Lover” column in the Weekend section of The Wall Street Journal is always an interesting read. Today she responded to a reader’s inquiry about whether a book can really change someone’s life.
Crossen quotes writer Sherwin R. Nuland (author of How We Die and The Soul of Medicine) who said Ah, the Cave Man was his life changer. Nuland was seven years old when he discovered this first non-Dick-and-Jane-type book. He says, “I had no idea that reading could be fun, that a boy could be transported to another place and time, and become so engrossed by descriptions and characters that he lost all consciousness of his surroundings, his worldly concerns and the very hour of the day.”
I can’t recall a particular book that changed me but I can certainly identify with losing all consciousness of suroundings while reading - the back seat of our 1950 Chevrolet on long trips to visit relatives; dinner tables where I was the only child surrounded by adult conversation; any dairy in Kentucky or Southern Indiana while Dad made another “just-for-a-minute” stop to talk to a customer.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Life Changing Books
Old Wisdom
Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.
- Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906)
This quote at the bottom of an “A.Word.A.Day” email first caught my attention because I recognized the source from my research. CARL SCHURZ, as U.S. Secretary of Interior, welcomed Chipeta as a member of the 1880 Ute Indian delegation that arrived in Washington, D.C. to discuss a treaty after the Meeker Massacre occurred in Colorado.
I saved this tidbit in my Chipeta files. Rediscovering it today, I was struck by the wisdom and timeliness of this German immigrant’s words.
